Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike

Factor 5's latest venture into the Star Wars universe is looking quite impressive. Here's our hands-on with the third in the Rogue Squadron series.

	Version GameCube	Developer Factor 5	Publisher Lucas Arts	Genre Action

By Joseph Jackson

We recently got a chance to take Rebel Strike for a brief spin across the stars and found it to be mighty impressive from a gameplay and visual standpoint. Personally I'm not a massive Star Wars fan, but I still found Rebel Strike to be very solid - which should at least say something about the quality of what Factor 5 has been cooking.

After Star Wars: Rogue Leader wowed gamers at the GameCube's launch as one of the very few games to really push the Cube hardware early on, Rogue Squadron III is here to continue pushing the boundaries and provide diversity within its play mechanics to help fans relive many of their favorite moments from the movie(s).

The story of Rebel Strike is based on the original Star Wars trilogy, so fans will be able to assume the role of Luke Skywalker among other characters and engage in quite a cinematic gameplay experience.

The gameplay provides players with the ability to play as several of the characters from the original Star Wars universe, and also to hop into the cockpit of some of their favorite vehicles and pilot such classics like the X-Wings, A-Wings, and more. You'll even be able to initiate ground-based assaults with the use of imperial speeder bikes and tauntauns, just to name a few of the transports available.

The Speeder bike portions of the game are quite fast as players take control of an imperial speeder bike and try to steer through the forests of Endor at top speeds in First person view, trying to avoid enemy fire and getting up close and personal with a tree, head first.

Other rides you can acquire are the Hoth snow lizards to help get you through the icy world, unless you'd rather walk. An option available in third person view. With the viewpoint of Rebel Strike switching between first person and third person often throughout the game, the gameplay will contain enough diversity to prevent it from becoming repetitive.

Along with the piloting of land, air, and space vehicles in the first & third person view missions, there will also be quite a few missions to perform while on foot. Utilizing a somewhat enhanced version of the engine used in some parts of Rogue Leader, which ironically was originally the Thornado engine, players will be able to run around in third-person view and possibly interact with some of the parked vehicles like in Rogue Leader. Despite the brisk and sometimes hectic nature of the game, the frame rate held it all together quite smoothly. We couldn't spot any frame rate fluctuations at all but that's not to say that there might not be any.

In keeping with the cinematic style of the game's atmosphere and its faithful representation of the movie, players are able to perform cool moves like running underneath the giant AT-ATs, fire some sort of grappling hook upwards towards the monster's belly and then pull up and slice open the belly of the mechanical terror with a light saber, chuck a thermal detonator inside the opening and bring the AT-AT crashing down with a bad tummy ache that not even Pepto Bismo could help. A scenario that should be quite familiar to fans of the movie, I'm certainly not one, but do remember the scene from a commercial.

Although from the stand point of an onlooker Rebel Strike may at times look a tad bit complicated, it's not difficult by any means. The game has arcade style gameplay that's easy to get into without losing a truckload of lives while trying to figure stuff out.

The targeting system is implemented well enough to allow players to easily land those well-placed shots. And to lighten the burden on easily stressed players, Rebel Strike has a wingman system reminiscent of Rogue Leader. Here players can bark out orders to their human wingman during battle.

As if fans of Rogue Leader weren't impressed enough, Rebel Strike doesn't just offer a new game in the series, it also contains all of the levels of its predecessor, allowing two players to play through them via split-screen co-op play, thanks to the multiplayer enhancement. There will also be other two player modes that allow friends to battle each other to the death in head to head action.

Graphically Rebel Strike looks pretty darn hot. Since the impressive entry of the previous game, the character models and environments have been improved significantly with a bump map here, detailed textures there, and very nice lighting effects everywhere. The screen can be quite populated with plenty of enemy fighters flying around, shooting, and blowing up all around you with no pop-up in sight and a frame rate that refuses to budge.

Factor 5 is one to always be pushing the envelope of what the GameCube can do and Rebel Strike showcases that quite admirably as it moonlights as both a game and a tech demo of the Gamecube's graphical muscle. Sound is another department the developers plan to give extra care to as the voice acting and dialog will be sampled directly from the original Star Wars Trilogy.

All in all, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike is shaping up to be a game that both fans and detractors of the original Star Wars series can enjoy. Stay tuned for more.